Introduction

Quickly assess your knowledge of Personal Practice & Self-Care, and identify gaps in your education. See below for assessments on these subjects:

1. Reaching Your Teaching Potential
2. Personal Practice & Study
3. Inspiration to Teach
4. Self-Care & Burnout

Purpose

Offer a series of free quizzes for yoga teachers to:

1. Provide an effective way to assess knowledge of each of the Teaching Knowledge Standards.
2. Make it easy to self-assess privately, on your own time.
3. Help teachers who identify educational gaps to bolster their knowledge with accessible and practical lessons.

More Self-Assessments

For more self-assessments, see the Standards & Self-Assessment Hub.

Reaching Your Teaching Potential

Teaching Standard

Understand the ways that being a teacher is different from being a student and explore particular actions that can help you to meet your potential as a teacher.

Assessment

1. Reflect on the differences in being a student vs. a teacher.
2. In contrast to allowing yourself to be a passive consumer of yoga information, it’s advisable to embrace teaching as an act of creation. Explain and provide examples.
3. To reach your teaching potential requires an explicit intention to do so. Explain.
4. Discuss the relevance of the fact that what you know and how you teach are two different things.
5. A key to unlocking your potential is learning the difference between “naïve practice” and “purposeful practice.” Explain
6. Why do you need to be organized?

Personal Practice & Study

Teaching Standard

Clearly understand why personal practice is vital for teachers and how to overcome obstacles to practice.

Assessment

1. Relate personal practice to self-care.
2. Explain why personal practice and study of the self are so vital for teachers.
3. Provide two perspectives on the phrase, “A teacher can lead a student only as far as she has gone herself.”
4. What is the value in yoga teachers investigating their wounds?
5. How can you experience improvement and “breakthroughs” both personally and professionally?
6. What are some common reasons for a home practice to fail?
7. How can you overcome the obstacles to practice?

Inspiration to Teach

Teaching Standard

Explore strategies for stoking your passion and inspiration to teach, overcoming perfectionism, inspiring persistence, and framing struggle or failure.

Assessment

1. To do your best teaching, you need a deep well of passion and inspiration. Give a number of sources that may help to stoke your inspiration to teach.
2. Describe strategies for overcoming perfectionism.
3. Describe a view of struggle, failure and perseverance that can support personal & business fulfillment.
4. Describe research that shows struggle and failure lead to better outcomes than having not struggled.
5. How can looking to existing teachings, best practices and research inspire you?

Self-Care & Burnout

Teaching Standard

Become clear about some common stressors faced by yoga teachers, and specific self-care strategies for preventing and addressing burnout.

Assessment

1. ​Describe common sources of stress for yoga teachers.
2. What is burnout?
3. What are some signs of burnout?
4. What can help to prevent or address burnout?
5. Media and commercialization pressures imply self-care is superficial pampering, which it is not. What else may be confused as self-care but is NOT?
6. Provide a number of ways to think about the concept of self-care.

Next Steps

1. To view more self-assessments, go to the Standards & Self-Assessment Hub.
2. To bolster your knowledge and be recognized as a YTC teacher, enroll in the Yoga Teacher Central Study Program (details below).
3. Members, view clear and concise lessons:

• Reaching Your Teaching Potential
• Personal Practice & Study
• Inspiration to Teach
• Self-Care & Burnout

In a Nutshell

• The enrollment fee is $25 and is open to Yoga Teacher Central members, past members and non-members.
• Members receive current membership benefits plus additional benefits listed below.
• Enrollment in the Study Program qualifies you for lifetime YTC Teacher status.

Benefits

Enrolling in the Study Program gives you:

1. A downloadable Knowledge Standards Lesson Guide to walk you through a structured study path toward certification.
2. Selection of 5 downloadable lessons of your choice (from a library of nearly 500).
3. Recognition as a YTC Teacher (for life; no expiration).
4. Professional marketing kit for highlighting your YTC Teacher status on social media and your website.
5. Excellent preparation for taking certification exams.

Members

• Your current membership gives you online access to not only thousands of pages of organized study and teaching knowledge, but also sequence breakdowns and teaching notes, theme plans, injury cheat-sheets, and so on.
• When you enroll in the Study Program, you get these additional benefits: a Knowledge Standards Lesson Guide, selection of 5 downloadable lessons of your choice, and a professional marketing kit for highlighting your YTC Teacher status on social media and your website.

See here for information about exams, badges and certification. Get links for each exam, and for a no-risk trial exam.

We think you’ll enjoy taking the exams. The questions are well-thought-out and the subject matter is quite engaging and significant for teachers. You’ll get an inspiring teaching after answering each question. At the end of the exam, you see a summary of wrong answers and the relevant teachings,  giving you a personal study guide targeted to your needs.

This is an hour well-spent!

Return to Yoga Teaching Standards & Self-Assessment Hub